The Al­berta Lib­eral Party has re­leased in­ter­nal gov­ern­ment emails they claim show that the NDP was in dam­age con­trol mode over school trans­porta­tion con­cerns in Calgary.

Nu­mer­ous Calgary par­ents have come for­ward with sto­ries about chal­lenges in re­la­tions to bus­ing changes that crit­ics say have been im­ple­mented due to the Al­berta NDP’s Bill 1.

In a pre­pared state­ment, Al­berta Lib­eral MLA David Swann, rep­re­sent­ing Calgary Moun­tainView, said it’s trou­bling to see the gov­ern­ment call the se­ri­ous con­cerns of par­ents in Calgary ‘noise and con­fu­sion.’

“The NDP were clearly aware of prob­lems with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of Bill 1 but chose spin over real ac­tion,” Swann said.

Ac­cord­ing to the news re­lease from the party, the in­ter­nal NDP email exchange be­gan when a par­ent asked the gov­ern­ment to at­tend an in­for­ma­tion ses­sion with the Calgary Board of Ed­u­ca­tion and Calgary Tran­sit Ser­vices.

The par­ent shared their per­sonal story of the lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenges and safety con­cerns they had around their young child us­ing pub­lic tran­sit for school, as well as the fi­nan­cial im­pact the trans­porta­tion changes could have on strug­gling fam­i­lies.

In clos­ing their email, the par­ent tells the gov­ern­ment to “do the right thing for our chil­dren.”

In the exchange, the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry ad­mits the sit­u­a­tion is a chal­lenge but tells their con­stituency of­fices to “hold still on com­mu­ni­ca­tion” un­til their mes­sag­ing strat­egy has been com­pleted.

Lind­say Har­vey, me­dia li­ai­son for Al­berta Ed­u­ca­tion said they heard con­fu­sion and con­cerns from par­ents re­gard­ing the CBE’s de­ci­sion to make changes to bus routes and bell start times.

“MLAs were in­quir­ing with the Min­is­ter’s of­fice about get­ting clear in­for­ma­tion for their con­stituents — that is what the email sent was in re­sponse to,” she said.

In the email exchange, the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry ad­mits the sit­u­a­tion is a chal­lenge but tells their con­stituency of­fices to “hold still on com­mu­ni­ca­tion” un­til their mes­sag­ing strat­egy has been com­pleted.